My life – and I wasn’t in it.

Thoughts are a driving force. As a writer, you know that because it’s your thoughts that sing and dance through your plot and make your story come alive. In that line, you are quite disciplined and think those thoughts every day. It’s creative, and creation is important.

What other thoughts do you have? Do you ever look at yourself and your own future in your thoughts, or are those thoughts all reserved for your writing or other artistic endeavors?

Yup, I’m going to say it again – I did that.

I lived for my writing. For many years, I lived pretty well in my writing. To a great extent, I got into writing as a child because the world inside my head was better than the world around me. At least I had some control over what was inside my head. I’m not going to get into the “oh-woes” of my childhood – we all had some of those and I had it a heck of a lot easier than many. Point is, I moved into my head and pretty well stayed there.

Then I ended up, a great many years later, with an excellent book and no way to sell it.

What had gone wrong? Yes, the publishing industry has problems, but they still accept some – so why wasn’t I one of the some?

Well… had I seen myself published? Had I seen myself at all? Um… no, actually. All my creative visualization had gone into the fantastic story within the pages, but never on the pages themselves. The story is not the book. I also never looked beyond getting it finished. I saw the story whole and as a great piece of work, but I didn’t see agents, publishers, media releases or book-signing ventures.